Driving an EV from Canberra to Queensland bypassing Sydney
I drove from Canberra to Coolangatta and back bypassing greater Sydney (2,877KM) in an electric vehicle I’d only owned for 5 weeks and the world didn’t end, nobody had to push the car and I didn’t die of range anxiety.
In May 2021 I took delivery of a Tesla Model 3 Standard Range+ in Canberra, Australia taking advantage of the new ACT Government policy of free registration for zero emissions vehicles for two years.
There’s plenty of YouTubers doing Tesla videos, I thought I might document our road-trip holiday here for those who prefer to skim, documenting our experience and answer all the FAQs I got from friends and family. I’ll assume little knowledge about electric vehicles and explain things along the way.
We had a family road-trip planned to Coolangatta, Queensland for June to see our new-born nephew and had the trip planned out with all the relevant charging stops along the way. A round-trip of approximately 2,200kms. We were going to spend two nights on the travel there, and two nights on the travel back.
Then a COVID-19 outbreak started in Sydney, leading to an increasing likelihood of driving all the way to Queensland only be stopped at the border because of travel restrictions. So to avoid any doubt we decided to go around Greater Sydney (whatever that is). Where there’s less EV infrastructure. Now our road-trip was closer to 2,877kms return. How did we do it?
Our “inland” trip wasn’t the pure inland trip you might take if you wanted the shortest route, we hugged the NSW coast as much as could once we got past Sydney. Part of this was existing accommodation bookings, part of it was sticking close to EV infrastructure. We also steered clear of Armidale in case we ran into a maskless Barnaby Joyce.
Let me point out something up-front: If you wanted to do this trip as quickly as possible, i.e. one massive day of driving, you would be waiting for the car to charge along the way. We only waited 15 minutes on one day of the trip, the rest of the time the car charged while we had a meal break. The car was usually charged back to 100% before we’d finished our meals. For a nicely paced family road-trip this was perfect for us. If I really wanted to get across that distance as quickly as possible, I’d take a plane.
How much did it cost?
About $33 of electricity — BUT I had 1,500kms worth of free Supercharging since I used a referral code when I bought my Tesla. Even if I’d paid for that, the cost per km is still a fraction of a petrol or diesel powered vehicle. Of that $33, $20 was a flat fee at one motel I stayed at that had a Tesla destination charger I could use to charge the car overnight. I could have avoided that, but paid for the convenience.
How did you charge?
Firstly let me explain the different charging options:
- 240V trickle charging — the car comes with a mobile charger you can use on any 240V power point (with permission!), either a 10A or 15A load. This is slow, but it works. Great for overnight somewhere with an external power point. You might charge your car at about 12 km/h (i.e. in 1 hour, 12km of range is added to the car).
- destination chargers — similar to the charger you might get installed in your garage at home, these can be found in some motels, car parks, visitor information centres and typically charge your car up to 85 km/h. They might be available for free or a fee.
- Fast Chargers — public networks you can use for free, or a fee. These can charge your car up to 300 km/h. In fact some can go even faster than this but they are not as common. The most common ones we saw were the NRMA ones, since our driving was in NSW. The NRMA ones at time of writing (July 2021) are free for now. Amaze.
- Superchargers — high powered Tesla-only chargers that can charge your car at up to 1,000 km/h. The Tesla has these built into it’s navigation system so you can drive straight to them — and doing this means the car “gets ready” to charge at such high speeds by warming the battery up before you get there. It won’t charge at that speed for the whole battery — it slows down, the same way all batteries do. But that speed on initial charge is pretty intoxicating!
We used a destination charger at a motel in Mudgee, and then either Fast Chargers or Tesla Superchargers the rest of the way. You can see where / when we charged below — with 4 nights in Coolangatta and not much driving that’s the big flat bit in the middle.
How did you know where the chargers were?
- The car knows where the Tesla Superchargers are — and even shows how many are available for a given destination. Just tap it and it will set the navigation for you.
- An app / website called Plugshare lists all the different charging options people have catalogued. You can search geographic areas for different charging options (as there are different standards depending on your car — and based on the above, how fast you want to charge!)
- An app / website called A Better Route Planner (ABRP) is also invaluable. You tell it what type of EV you have, where you want to go to and start from and it’ll tell you how to get there, where to charge along the way and how long you need to charge for.
The NRMA charging network:
Plugshare showing NSW and all the Tesla Model 3 compatible charging sites:
When did you charge?
On the days we drove we generally charged:
- Morning tea break (30 mins-ish)
- Lunch break (45 mins-ish)
At each of those, whenever we were idle we had the car plugged in charging. Between two adults and an almost-teen someone always needed a wee / snack / drink after 2–3 hours driving and so we just planned the above breaks in with those stops. It meant going to where the chargers were — but pretty much all the chargers we went to had some kind of facilities. Again, something to check out in advance on Plugshare.
Our first charge — Cowra, NRMA charger — 40 minutes.
I charged overnight three times — once at our Mudgee hotel which was the first stop ($20). The other nights I visited the NRMA Fast Charger in town and topped up there so in the morning we were ready to go. One of those nights we walked 1 block to dinner and by the time we were finished eating the car was charged. One night I went and sat in the car while it charged and doom-scrolled Twitter on my phone since I hadn’t been able to do that while driving all day. I would have done the exact same thing in the motel, so it didn’t feel like I was put out or wasting time.
So while the charging takes longer than an ICE vehicle at a servo — I can do things while it charges. I can walk off to dinner, or take a bio-break or check the local sights nearby. It’s not an issue. Yes we slightly changed where we stopped for lunch / snacks but it was fine and in some cases better than the usual road fare we would have gotten.
That one time we waited for 15 minutes charge? We left South West Rocks (no charging infrastructure) and stopped in at Cassiegrain winery to charge at the Tesla Supercharger. It was too early in the morning for them to be open, so instead of having a coffee and charging for 30 minutes we just stretched our legs, charged for 15 then hit the road and got coffee at the next Supercharger. It was hardly an ordeal.
So was the range what you expected?
We were highway driving in the cold and had 2 adults + 1 kid + lots of bags on board. The range I got in real life was about 80% of what the car thought I should have got. Without the benefits of lots of regenerative braking the battery went down faster than I thought — I did notice it seemed to fare better the further north (and warmer) it got.
At the end of the day it didn’t matter, I still would have stopped at the same places along the way to charge. On the first day I was a bit anxious but by the end of the week I was fine. It’s a different mindset to an ICE vehicle where you drive to empty then fill up — with an EV you are better off charging shorter sessions, more often. The battery charge rate varies and optimally between 20–80% is the fastest it will charge (some nerds will probably correct me on the specifics here), after 80% the car charging really slows down. Again, if you’re doing something else you don’t notice or care. But if you were sitting there waiting to drive on, you’d be better off stopping around 80% then charging again down the road rather than get to 100%.
The Tesla Supercharger network is awesome
When I was considering an EV I looked at a Hyundai Kona, and MG ZS EV and a Model 3. One of the things that swayed me toward the Model 3 is it has access to both the public charging infrastructure and the Tesla superchargers. The Superchargers are awesome in that there’s multiple at each site — the smallest one I went to only had 4 bays for charging, but the biggest had 8. Some of the public charging infrastructure can only charge 1 car at a time. Also when you only have 1 charger at your destination there’s a chance it’s out of order or in use. Having the advantage of the most choices certainly helped eliminate any range anxiety. It also meant we stopped at great places like Hollydene winery where we had a coffee + snack. We’d have never stopped in there in our ICE vehicle, so we got to see new awesome places.
The Tesla Supercharger network in this part of the world:
How did the car drive?
I keep comparing it to a go kart with a computer. It corners like it’s on rails and has torque for days meaning I can accelerate whenever I want to. Getting tailed by a diesel SUV before a big hill? Just put the foot down and leave them behind.
It was a smooth ride, comfortable and at the end of each day I felt noticeably less fatigued than if we’d taken our Subaru Forester. Less cabin noise, more comfortable seats and better driver supports — adaptive cruise control and auto-steer reducing concentration fatigue perhaps? My son didn’t have any carsickness and rode in the back the entire time — there’s rear air vents so potentially that helped, but he said he felt like the car swayed less.
Where are all these cool stats coming from?
What, doesn’t your ICE car have a rich set of stats about efficiency? Weird. There’s some free software called Teslamate which I run to collect all this info from the car, that’s what I’ve been using to show you snippets of our trip.
Any regrets?
Nope, I love the car — it’s the best car I’ve ever driven or owned. I may not always own a Tesla, but I can’t see myself going back to an ICE vehicle ever again.
In conclusion
We had to drive the long way around a cooties infected Sydney in the cold of winter in an EV and we did it comfortably and easily. Yes we had to think about it in advance and plan our trip but it wasn’t arduous — it was fun and we got to see new places we’d never been before.
If you’ve found this useful and you’re going to take the plunge and want to get 1,500km free supercharging then have I got a referral link for you: http://ts.la/craig41912
Thanks for reading this far, I hope you found this useful.
